Southern California -- this just in

Dorner manhunt: Setting fire to cabin justified, some experts say

February 15, 2013 | 8:06
am

Several experts said they believe that deputies' actions that set off the fire that ended the Christopher Dorner cabin standoff appear to be justified.

"I don't understand what the big deal is," said Geoffery Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina who also specializes in police tactics. "This man had
already shot two officers and was suspected of murdering other people.
He wasn't responding in a rational manner. The actions you take have to
remove the threat and if it requires extreme measures, then so be it."

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon at a
Wednesday news conference adamantly denied that deputies intended to burn the cabin down . But the
department on Thursday declined to answer further questions about the
standoff.

The day's light was fading when the SWAT officers decided they could wait no longer for Dorner to surrender.

Dorner, the fired Los Angeles cop suspected of killing four people in
a campaign of revenge, had been holed up in a cabin near Big Bear Lake
for hours, trading gunfire with sheriff's
deputies. He ignored repeated calls over a loudspeaker for him to surrender. Attempts to flush him out with tear gas led nowhere.

Wanting to end the standoff before nightfall, members of the
sheriff's SWAT unit carried out a plan they had devised for a final assault
on the cabin, according to law enforcement sources. An officer drove a
demolition vehicle up to the building and methodically tore down most of
its walls, the sources said.

With the cabin's interior
exposed, the officer got on the radio to others awaiting his order.
"We're going to go forward with the plan, with the burner," the
unidentified officer said, according to a recording of police radio
transmissions reviewed by The Times.

"The burner" was shorthand for a grenade-like canister containing a
more powerful type of tear gas than had been used earlier. Police use
the nickname because of the intense heat the device gives off, often starting a fire.

"Seven burners deployed," another officer responded several seconds
later, according to the transmission which has circulated widely among
law enforcement officials. "And we have a fire."

Within minutes the cabin was fully engulfed in flames, ending a dramatic manhunt that captivated the nation.

The SWAT radio transmission, in addition to the comments of at least
one officer who earlier in the gun battle could be heard by a TV
reporter calling for the cabin to be burned down, have raised questions
as to whether authorities intentionally set the
structure on fire to end the standoff.

Multiple sources, who were at the scene and asked that their names
not be used because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said
the decision to use the incendiary gas canisters came amid mounting
concern that time and options were running out.

Dorner, they said, had not communicated with police at any point
during the siege and had continued to fire off rounds at them with
high-caliber weapons. "Any time they moved, this guy was shooting," one
source said. Bringing large floodlights into the area was deemed too
dangerous and police worried Dorner might have night-vision goggles that
would give him an advantage.

When they eventually moved in with the demolition vehicle and began
to get glimpses into the cabin as the walls were torn down, Dorner's
whereabouts and condition were unknown. On the radio transmission, one
officer describes seeing blood splattered inside the cabin and then
another reports hearing a single gunshot being fired, raising the
possibility that Dorner may have killed himself before the fire engulfed
the cabin.

On Thursday the sheriff's department announced
dental records had confirmed what had been widely assumed since the
showdown — that the charred body found in the cabin rubble was Dorner's.
The test results brought to a definitive close the epic manhunt for
Dorner, 33, who police say killed a deputy during the cabin shootout, a
Riverside police officer and an Irvine couple as part of a plot to
retaliate against the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him in 2009.

Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the
University of Nebraska Omaha, was critical of the decision to use the
"burner" tear gas canisters.

"It's true, he was firing at them. But he was cornered. He was
trapped. At that point, there was no rush in the sense that he was
barricaded. The standard rules on barricade situations are that you can
wait the person out," Walker said. "To use a known incendiary device
raises some very serious questions in my mind."

Other law enforcement experts interviewed by The Times, however, said
the move was justified. Even though SWAT officers were certain to have
known a fire was a strong possibility, the use of the gas was reasonable
in the face of the deadly threat Dorner presented, they said. Allowing
the standoff to carry on into the night, they emphasized, would have
added an unpredictable element to the drama that officials were smart to
avoid.

"What difference does it make if one of the officers puts a … round
in his head, drives the armored vehicle over his body when they are
knocking the building down, or he dies in a conflagration?" said David
Klinger, a use-of-force expert at the University of Missouri at St. Louis
and a former LAPD officer. "If he is trying to surrender you can't do
any of those things .… But if he is actively trying to murder people,
there's no doubt that deadly force is appropriate and it doesn't matter
what method is used to deliver it."